Undiscovered Talent

what would it take

for us to discover our real talent

how can we get to the root of our

undiscovered talent

and use it to unlock and explore

opportunities

for ourselves and for our nation

what if i told you it was about not

really having a choice

but to make things work generation z

or those born after 1995 have been born

into a digital world

one full of choices even as millennials

born in the 1980s and the early 1990s

have often needed to travel to discover

ourselves or take in a gap year to

explore

options our parents probably never had

and to change the way we think or to

encourage us to work in a particular

direction

you often have to tap into our actual

belief systems

how many of you have had that intern who

quit

just because they weren’t feeling it

how many of you have waited and waited

to find that

perfect person to make sure that you

were truly in love

we all know that marriages in our

generation

are getting later and later

look at the movie game changers for

instance

they didn’t try to change our behavior

what they did was tap into our belief

systems

and use influencers to show us that

being vegan

might actually be the healthier way to

be

and it worked millions of people have

actually

watched that movie and been convinced

by a documentary on netflix

this isn’t such a new concept really

marketers

have been using the ability to change

consumer behavior by actually changing

their attitudes

towards certain beliefs and then

eventually using it to sell their

products

what they’re doing is fixing cognitive

dissonance

aligning people’s values and beliefs

with their behaviors

and then resulting in a corresponding

behavior change

but what happens when there’s a drastic

event like covet 19

our behavior has to change overnight and

that

in some cases may also force us to

change our attitudes

leading to a different way to

essentially solve for cognitive

dissonance why is this interesting

and why is it especially interesting for

the future of work

we’ve had to stop traveling embrace the

way

that we have zoom parties netflix

parties

adopt technology but it’s also made us

explore some certain

rapid industry changes change the way

that we respond to health and hygiene

adapt and appreciate some things that we

possibly would never have

done before and done it much faster

because we didn’t really have a choice

more interestingly

it’s allowed us to push ourselves and

access

undiscovered talent that we had within

us

i run an edtech company called talent

where we provide career training and

jobs to generation z

we surveyed many of our customers to ask

them how has this

change affected them and the way that

they approach work

we found that people have lost jobs in

industries that they cared about

and they have left industries that they

believed in

corporates have had to let employees

work from home

even when they didn’t want to

and companies have had to virtually hire

people

often democratizing talent allowing

those

in smaller remote areas to work

and access job opportunities that they

wouldn’t have been able to

otherwise people have had to improve

several types of skills

from their communication skills to their

coding skills

and of course rapidly improve their

comfort with technology

so we have ultimately changed the way

that we work

we changed our behavior a whole lot

and we did it but worse is just a

temporary change

or has it also fundamentally changed

people’s beliefs

94 of our respondents say

that their attitudes have been changed

by this experience

78 of them have changed their view

towards work-life balance

and 70 of them have changed their view

towards work from home

57 percent now believe that they will

spend

much more energy on their health and

their overall hygiene

but more importantly they have all been

pushed to learn new skills

we have all been pushed outside our

comfort zone and we have had to make

things work

not surprisingly in the u.s over 50

percent

of love marriages end in divorce

but less than four percent of a range

marriages end in divorce because they

have no options sometimes

but to make things work in a survey that

we conducted pre-pandemic with jen

said we found that passion and interest

is a key driver contributing more than

40 percent to how gen zen makes their

career decisions

passion counted more than skills

aptitude

or even their previous experiences which

counted for less than 10

each in how they would pick their

careers

but today 46

of our generation is now focused on

learning

new skills we’re pushing ourselves

outside our comfort zone because we

don’t have an option

so what can we take away from this shift

while we had no option but to do this

because of

this catastrophic event what can we

actually

learn from this experience can we learn

for example to build new skills

which are the need of the hour anyway

instead of waiting for another big event

to hit

us can we adapt as required

to where we need ourselves our country

and the world to be

5 10 or 15 years from now because after

all the world is changing very quickly

and we need to build skills now even if

that makes us a little uncomfortable

even when it doesn’t seem required

immediately so that we can be relevant

later a few years ago

i traveled across india to understand

how people would respond

to online learning from vishakhapatnam

to patiala goa to lucknow

chennai to nasik i spoke to thousands of

young people and faculty

and ran surveys to understand their

attitude towards online education

many of them requested us to come in and

conduct

employability sessions in person

they said it would take a while for

people to adapt

to online they said it impossible

to learn certain skills digitally

and now many of those institutions

are delivering their very own online

programs

many of those same students who were not

confident about learning online

have reached out to us for online

employability training

surprisingly we’re seeing equally good

outcomes

both in terms of learning as well as

satisfaction

online while it is uncomfortable

sometimes

for our customers and for us perhaps

that’s when the maximum growth is

actually happening

because we’re being pushed and

challenged

don’t get me wrong i’m all for passion

but i think it’s worth exploring areas

that the world

needs us to change for and take

inspiration to build a career

that is not just inward looking but also

forward-looking because it is only when

we stop doing what we always know

and explore outside what we know that we

learn new things

and we find undiscovered talents within

ourselves

as a nation we could grow our capability

and diversify

the skills that we bring to the table

we could increase our creativity

developing an ancillary suite

of skills that would make us more

competitive and more relevant

on the global stage

for all you know we might just be happy

while adapting as well after all

who says that the arranged marriage

folks from yesterday

are madly in love today thank you